MY BABY IS ONE YEAR OLD!!!!

In honor of Andrew's birthday, I seem to have waited an entire year to update this blog!  Maybe not quite, but so much for that New Year's resolution!  Oh well, there are just more important things to me than blogging, I suppose, although I love reading others' blogs!  I decided to put some early pictures of Andrew so we could remember what he was like a year ago!  He has changed so much!  He's such a delight and a joy.  Dan and I talk all the time about how much more we love him every day!

This is a picture I took recently when I went in to wake Andrew up from his nap.  I often have to wake him on Wednesdays so I can go to work.  Dan meets us at my office and takes him home for the evening.  He had been sleeping on his tummy with his legs tucked up under him for so long, and I was surprised to see him stretched out on his back like this!  He always has one of his "babies" close by while he sleeps!

These pictures are after his first hair cut a couple of weeks ago.  We took him to the Magic Kingdom for his first hair cut, which I had been anticipating since I found out about it a few months after he was born.  I was so excited to see his mullet come in because I knew the hair cut was coming, and I was more excited to see the mullet go!  He did great with his hair cut!  By the way, that ten dollar balloon in the family picture is still floating!!  I never would have guessed we would get our money out of that one, but apparently we have!

And here are some pictures from Andrew's first birthday party!  It was so much fun, and it went perfectly!  I really couldn't believe it.  I was prepared for meltdowns or whatever may come.  We ended up having a pretty big crowd, so I wasn't sure that would go over well with Andrew.  But he took his two naps that day, so he was well rested, and he LOVED it!  It was an Elmo party, and we had lots of fun decorations.  I made his cupcake cake, and he at just about all of his cupcake!  He was definitely on a sugar high for a while after that.  It was such a special day, and I couldn't have done it without all the help from family and friends.  We were sad that most of my family, especially Dub, couldn't be there.  But Mimi represented them, and Andrew loved having her here!

We're doing well overall!  We're staying very busy, and it makes me overwhelmed to think of all the things that I could update on here!  Dan and I are leading a couples Bible study for our Life Group, which I'm putting together.  It's a lot of work, but it has been going really well so far!  I'm learning a lot in the process.   Andrew is not walking yet, but he has taken a lot of steps.  He can do it, but he just chooses to crawl most of the time because it's faster.  I'm sure he'll walk when he's ready!  He babbles a lot and says a few actual words.  His main word is "hot."  He says "hot" whenever he wants something.  We weren't sure why for a while, but we recently realized that he learned it from Gigi, Dan's mom.  She stays with him on Fridays when I work, and she often has coffee.  He always wants to taste it, and she has, of course, told him that it is hot!  I guess he associated those two things, so everything he wants is "hot."  It's very cute and a little uncomfortably reminiscent of Paris Hilton!!  

Well, I guess that's all I have time for right now.  This is a very stream of consciousness update, but at least it gives you a little picture of our life right now!  It's been a GREAT year!  We are inexpressibly blessed to have Andrew Christoph in our lives!